Kindle the Flame
by WhatBecomesOfYou
Summary: Sequel to Rising from the Ashes. It's been a year since she came back to Las Vegas, and it's time for Sara and Nick to make a few decisions. Eventual Sara/Nick. Now complete.
1. Certain

**Author's Note**: _Sequel to "Rising from the Ashes" and "Ashes to Ashes," and it might make a little more sense if those two are read first._

* * *

Sara was fairly certain, all things considered, that Nick would be asking her to start chipping in on the rent – which would mean finding a job somewhere. After all, she had turned his living room couch into her bedroom the past year, and her toothbrush rested in the toothbrush holder next to his, and her leaves of spinach sat in the refrigerator next to his uncooked steaks. It was to the point where she either needed to chip in, or move out, because this was almost like her home.

Even though he hadn't said anything to her about it yet, of _course_.

She cleaned around the apartment while he was at work, though, and occasionally could talk him into eating what she made for herself, and their arrangement _worked_.

He had been such a good friend through everything, she mused to herself as she swiped the dust cloth lazily over the coffee table. _Such_ a good friend and nothing she could _ever_ do would repay him for the emotional support he had given her over this course of events.

* * *

Nick was fairly certain, all things considered, that Sara would be moving out soon. Not that he wanted her to, not because he felt as though she _should_ - he enjoyed her company, and even though he would never admit it to anyone except for her, he had grown some sort of affinity for her meat-free dishes. Maybe it was because she would smile gratefully at him as he ate her vegetarian lasagna, or whichever meal it was that night. Maybe it was something else entirely.

It had been a _year_ though since he was woken up by a call from the airport, a call from a distraught Sara, asking to be picked up even though it was five in the morning. She had settled into his apartment - first it appeared to be temporary, then indefinite - and made it her home, of sorts. He would _never_ kick her out of someplace she considered home.

Even though it was working between them, he thought, as he pulled himself out of bed and threw on a t-shirt, she'd want to move on one of these days. And while it wasn't something he necessarily wanted, he would support her in whatever way she needed. After all, she had been through _so_ much, with him by her side - there was _no_ way he would leave her now.

* * *

"What's for dinner?" he asked, seeing Sara standing in the kitchen and washing her hands at the sink. Two place settings were already on the table: two plates, two glasses, two of everything.

She looked over at him. "Spaghetti and salad," she said, turning off the faucet, "it should be ready in fifteen or so."

"No meatballs, I take it," he replied with a mock-pout.

"No." She turned back to the box of angel hair noodles and studied it intently.

"One of these days, Sidle, _one of these days_."

"Keep dreaming," she said with a laugh, "now, _out_, so I can finish!"

* * *

Dinner was filled with companionable silence - neither of them spoke, except for an early declaration by Nick that "this is the best spaghetti you've made yet, Sara," which earned him a smile. He twirled the spaghetti noodles around his fork; she stabbed a dressing-covered lettuce leaf and a crouton with her fork; the sounds of chewing and swallowing were the only sounds in the room.

It was almost domestic of them.

* * *

Later that evening, she curled up on the couch and tucked her feet beneath her; he sat next to her, his hand resting on the back of the couch. "Nick," she said, turning to face him, "are you happy to have me here?"

He looked at her, and said, almost without thinking, "Of course I am, why wouldn't I be happy?"

"Because I've been living here for almost a year."

"Is that all?" he asked, laughing, "It feels like you've been here longer."

She narrowed her eyes. "Are you trying to imply something?"

"No. I'm not implying anything."

"Do you want me to pay you rent? I can get a job."

"Sara, I can _pay_ for the rent on my own apartment."

"I was making you an offer."

"I know," he said, absent-mindedly reaching over and touching her shoulder, "but it's fine, really. You can stay as long as you want."

"Good," she replied, resting against his side, her eyes fluttering closed. She eventually fell asleep there, her head resting on his shoulder.

What they had - skirting the line between friendship and something more - was something Nick treasured. And as he faded off to sleep, his head resting on top of hers, the furthest thing from his thoughts was the letters he had written - and _burned_ - over a year before. After all, that had been a different time in his life...

-_to be continued_-


	2. Confession

Sara couldn't count the number of mornings she'd woken up with Nick near her, whether it was in the next room, hovering overhead, or, as it was this morning, next to her, her head using his shoulder as a pillow. It was comforting, though. She shook her head at her position and tried to stand up. As she did so, she heard him let out a groan. "D'n'go, Sar'," he murmured, "stay ri'_here_."

She thought for a moment about taking him up on his request, crawling back onto the couch and laying there and forgetting everything about the world around them and allowing it to be just the two of them for some brief period of time.

Instead, she went off to take a shower. It was time to divert her thoughts away from where her mind was headed.

He was her _friend_, after all.

* * *

"Do you want to get away for the weekend?" Nick asked a few days later, dangling his car keys enticingly. "I know you haven't really -"

"Yes," she answered, grinning, "I'd _love _to get away, actually. Your apartment is nice and all, but -"

"Great. I'll make all the plans."

* * *

"Why don't we have this out as a decoration?" Sara asked the next evening, holding a small, blue ornamental urn in her hands. She'd found it while cleaning out the kitchen cupboards that afternoon, and something about it transfixed her. "It's _really_ pretty, and it would look nice on that shelf in the living room."

Nick's eyes widened momentarily, before he exhaled deeply and sat down at the dining table. He had to weigh the pros and cons of honesty: pro, being that the white elephant in the corner would disappear, the con being that she would probably never speak to him again. "I had forgotten about that."

"What do you mean?"

"This isn't how I wanted to tell you, Sara."

"Tell me what?"

"It holds the ashes of the letters I never sent you while you were in Costa Rica."

"I never got any letters from you though, unless you count that Christmas card of you in a cowboy Santa hat as a letter."

"That's," he paused, "kind of the _point_. Nothing I wrote in those letters -"

"- were the kind of things you felt you could tell _me_ of all people. I'm not made of _porcelain_, Nick; if you hurt me, I'm _not_ going to crack into a million pieces."

"No. I _couldn't _tell you, Sara. You were with Grissom, and you were _happy_, and I wasn't going to stand in the way of all that."

Her face contorted into one of barely-concealed misery at the mention of Grissom's name. "_Stop_ being so - _so_ - so - _honorable_," she said, almost spitting out the words, "and just _tell_ me what you wanted _so badly _to tell me but felt you had to _burn_ all the evidence." She added almost as an afterthought, "Grissom isn't here."

"I'm _in love_ with you." His shoulders sagged forward, and he placed his palms on the table, as if to balance himself without the weight of the world on his shoulders. Almost instantly, he regretted saying it, unsure of whether she would slap him, burst into tears or run out the door, or some combination of the above in short order.

"Yeah, _right_."

"No, I really am."

"_Prove it_." She set the urn on the counter and folded her arms over her chest defiantly, almost daring him to make the next move.

"You have the cut-"

"No, I _don't_ want you to flatter me with a list of compliments that could describe half the women in this city, Nick. I want you to prove why you think you love _me_."

He stood and faced her, and in two quick motions, crossed what little floor separated them. She opened her mouth to continue her statement, but as she did, he kissed her, cupping her chin in one of his hands as his lips explored hers. She let out a slight gasp and began to gently suck at his lower lip, before stepping backwards with tears brimming in her eyes. "You proved it," she said with a sad smile, her voice nearly cracking, as the first tears fell down her face, "and now I have to -"

"Please," Nick said, his heart nearly breaking as she stood there crying, "_don't go_." His first instinct when a woman - _especially_ one he was in love with, as he was with her - cried in front of him was to gather her in his arms and offer his unconditional support. Under the circumstances, that appeared to be the worst action he could take.

"I'm not leaving, but I just - I want to sleep, okay?"

"That sounds like a good idea."

* * *

_She walked along an old dusty path and came to a fork in the road - two paths to choose from, and she couldn't continue along the same path she had been treading._ _There would be no turning back once she chose which way to go. _

_Her conscience told her to choose the first way, which appeared to have much of the same dust as her old path, with a slight cold wind echoing down the passage. It appeared to be cloudier and darker, but it was hard to tell from where she was standing._

_Her mind, on the other hand, told her to choose the second way, which was a little brighter, a little sunnier, with less dust and only the faint feeling of a warm breeze. It seemed to be more openly inviting._

_She was torn._

_As she stepped forward to make her decision_...

She woke up, sweating and clutching onto her blankets. Her dream couldn't make her choice for her. Worse, she wasn't sure which choice corresponded to which fork in the road.

She was beginning to fall for Nick, that much was something she'd known for a while, as much as she wanted to not admit it to herself. After the events of the past few days, though, between him inviting her to go away with him somewhere - and now, that innocent invitation carried the connotation of so much more - and their heated conversation earlier that evening, everything had changed between them, for good. She hadn't felt anything like this about anyone in a while, and she remembered how had ended, and she couldn't - not now, maybe not ever.

It was up to her, now, to decide what the next move would be, or she risked losing everything.

-_to be continued_-


	3. Consequence

**Author's Note**: _I hate that another year has come and gone without an update to this story. I know. It's horrible._ _However, I'm happy to say that I've re-found my motivation to finish this story and have made it my priority to finish it before the end of my summer vacation._

* * *

The next few days were, in a word, awkward.

They were almost like two strangers passing in a confined space. Her eyes ducked whenever he'd look over her way; he'd find something fascinating in the wallpaper when she dared to look over. It was the polar opposite of whatever they had had before.

Sara missed her best friend. She missed what they had been before awkward love confessions and kisses and _feelings_ got in the way.

And, yet, she hadn't walked away from him. She'd been tempted, but even as she threw clothing haphazardly into suitcases, she found that while she could think about leaving, she couldn't _actually_ leave. What that said about her, said about Nick, said about this whole convulated situation, she wasn't really sure. She had been falling for him, but now that the elephant was out of the corner of the room and her feelings had been vocalized - what did that mean? She considered herself a widow of some sort, after all. In some cultures, widows were expected to remain faithful to their deceased husbands for the rest of their lives, living out their lives in cloistered seclusion and bathing in the same water that held their ashes.

Not that Grissom would have ever expected that level of eternal fidelity from her.

She could wrestle with the impact of what was left unsaid between her and Nick. She could make a wager at the contents of some of the letters, more than likely: he loved her and always had and wished that he could have said something before she started dating Grissom - as if there was some way he could have changed history at that point.

She frowned as she mindlessly wiped sparse water droplets from a newly-cleaned glass and set it inside the cupboard. The fact that she was so torn over what her next step would be, coupled with the fact that Nick was pointedly ignoring her, was what was driving her crazy at the moment. As she picked up the next glass to wipe it clean, she heard the key turn in the doorjamb, and she turned to face him. This detente had gone on long enough. "Hi," she said, looking over the rim of the glass and offering him a small and tentative smile.

"Hey," he said, throwing his windbreaker over the top of the chair nearest to the door and settling down on her couch. His couch. Theirs? "She speaks." He faced away from her and looked out the window at a bird on the fence.

"And so does he," she retorted, setting down the glass and walking over to face him. "You realize it's been -"

"Four days."

"Four days since my best friend - the person I turned to in my darkest hour of need - said that he was in love with me, and had been for a long time."

"I don't remember a time when I knew you and wasn't in love with you."

"That's my point, Nick," she said, exhaling and sitting on the edge of the couch. "How much of you agreeing to take me in was you being a genuinely good guy, and how much of it was you wanting the woman you say you're in love with close by - to mend her broken heart and hope that her sights set on you once she was more healed?"

"You're my best friend, Sara. I would have done it for you regardless. I would have done it for Greg, or Catherine, or -"

"Or Grissom." The knife blade of saying his name didn't stab quite as far this time as it had in the past, but it still stung. He'd always be there. Right below the surface. And if she was honest with herself, that was the biggest problem she was facing right now.

"Right. Or Grissom. Any of you. And I wouldn't have expected anything of any of them, or you, for that matter. It just - it happened _you_ were the one who needed me."

"And you were intending for those letters to remain what, your dirty little secret you think about at night?"

"I was planning on telling you one day, when the timing was right."

"Some women would find it _really_ creepy that you did this," she said, sighing and pinching the bridge of her nose between her fingers. "Others would find it really romantic. I just. don't. know. what to think, Nick. Or what to do."

"I think it's your choice if you want to stay or go. I'm not stopping you if you want to go, but -" he paused and looked over at her. "I'd be willing to get rid of it. The urn, I mean. Start fresh with you. No more ties to our pasts. A blank slate." The look in his eyes was a stark combination of hope and despair. Despair: he feared he'd lost any chance, for his previous actions. Hope: he wanted her to stay.

"I think that's a good place to start," she said. She'd already considered leaving, but her own feelings toward the situation were apparently too strong to make it anything more than a fleeting thought. Not that she was going to tell him that. Not that it wasn't fairly self-evident, if he looked at her half-filled suitcases. "What do you want to do with it?"

"Flush the ashes down the toilet. Dump them in the tub. Throw them in the desert. Then smash the urn. Or whatever works for you."

She flashed him a quick smile. "How does a trip to the mountains sound?"

"Well, I _was_ planning to take you sailing on Lake Mead - but the mountains it is?"

"We can save sailing for _after_." After. After the ashes were gone, after they had a blank slate between them - then things would be open between them. The only thing that couldn't be burned and scattered into the wind with the rest was the one thing that was burned into her mind: that kiss they'd shared - the feeling of his lips on hers, and how his rough hands held her chin so delicately.

Not that she thought she _really_ wanted the memory of that wiped away. Even despite everything she had wrestled over the past few days, it felt nice to be wanted again. Loved, even.

He nodded in reply, stood up and crossed the room over to his kitchen. "Whenever you're ready," he said. "Whenever you're ready, we can go. If it's now or if it's in two weeks or - well, not _now_ now." He paused. "_Now_, I'm going to take a shower, crawl into bed, and dream of a world where the Vegas crime rate is non-existent."

"Long day at the lab?" she asked, turning to face him, placing her arms on the back of the chair and offering what she hoped was a comforting smile.

"After this many years on the job, I'm surprised I can still be surprised by what people can do to each other."

"And _that_'s why I've never gone back," she said with an uneasy laugh as she watched him walk away.

* * *

The air in his apartment warmed considerably after their conversation that night. It wasn't quite back to the easy simplicity that Sara had grown accustomed to - their food still sat side by side in the fridge, and he hadn't moved his manly-man shampoo away from her more floral scents, and they talked more about things other than the ashen elephant in the corner of the room. But as long as the elephant was there in all of his girth, they would never be able to move beyond where they were, and every motion was fraught with the uneasy implications that offered. Nick wasn't going to push her to make a decision any time soon. That much she knew.

But it wasn't fair to keep him hanging forever. Yes or no. Ready or not. She had to tell him one way or the other, so they could move past it - either into a relationship of some sort, which was the likely result of what was to come, or as two ships soon to pass into the night.

"I can't _believe_ this doesn't have meat in it," Nick said, holding his taco shell up to the light bulb and examining the contents from all sides. "It's so -"

"Awesome? Tasty? Maybe..._lentil_-_licious_?" she offered with a laughing smile as she spooned up another serving of salsa and speared the edge of a tortilla chip into it. "I never was much for cooking, but with all the free time I have now -"

"I was going to say odd. I've never had a taco without hamburger or steak. But it's great. Really."

They ate in silence a little longer, the faint static of the police scanner in the background and the crunching of shells and chips being the only sounds, before Sara turned to Nick and put down her taco. "Nick?"

"Yeah?"

She inhaled quickly. There was no turning back now. "I'm ready."

"For another taco?" He gestured toward the platter in front of them. "You don't have to ask me, there's plenty there. You made sure of that."

"No." She put her hand over his and squeezed it gently. "I'm _ready_."

She'd seen Nick in a million different kinds of moods over the years, from ecstatic to disgusted, excited to distraught, enamored to depressed, and just about every kind of mood in between. She knew his facial tics and reactions. Except - the smile that crossed his face upon hearing her words and feeling her motion - that one was completely new to her.

"_When_?" he asked, barely choking the words out in a startled gasp.

"Tomorrow?"

He stood up, walked around the table and enveloped her in a tight embrace. "Tomorrow," he echoed.

That night, she had the same recurring dream as she had been having since his declaration, with the two paths in front of her.

_At the fork in the road, she was torn between what appeared to be a continuation of her current dusty, well-trodden path and one that was a little brighter and sunnier. There was no way to keep going straight on the same exact path she had been on._

_As she stepped forward to make her decision, it was immediately clear which one she should walk down. She shifted herself to the right and began her first tentative steps on the new, brighter path. _

_-to be continued-_


	4. Commitment

The drive to Mount Charleston was only thirty or forty miles according to the instructions Sara had printed out from the internet, but it felt _so_ much longer. The radio was turned down low; the volume was high enough that it was clearly turned on, but low enough that a distinct impression of what was being listened to couldn't be made. It could have been any song for all she knew, noticed, or cared. Her attention was focused on two things: the task at hand, and the man accompanying her.

Every so often she would steal a look at Nick over in the driver's seat, and he would look over at her, and their eyes would meet just long enough for him to offer her a reassuring smile. The thought of flinging ashes off into the waters of Lake Mead and then going on a carefree day of sailing was an appealing thought, she had to admit. However, she was unsure of what potential health problems adding ash to the region's water supply would do. That being said, she was always more of a mountain woman than a water woman, anyway.

"You okay?" he asked, motioning to the small urn she held clasped in her hands. "If you're having second thoughts, I can turn around."

"No. No second thoughts," she said, smiling and placing the urn inside the cupholder. "I want what _this_ represents out of our lives."

"So do I," he murmured, turning his attention back to the road in front of him. And she knew that he was right, and that he was thinking a lot about what the ashes had been in a previous life. What they meant to him was different than what they meant to her. Of course they did. "So do I."

* * *

The little mountain overlook they found made it appear as though they had entered a completely different world - instead of the harsh brush and sand and desert landscape that they had grown to know so well, there were trees and waterfalls and greenery. Sara stepped out of the car and held the urn tightly to her chest. It felt colder than when she had gotten in the car - then again, they were in the mountains now, it made sense. "You ready?" she called out to Nick.

"Yeah, yeah," he said, walking around to her side of the car. "The question is - are you?"

She knew the symbolism behind the moment. And - and she was ready. If she was honest with herself, she was ready. More than ready. Ready as she would ever be and more. And she said the one word that meant more for him to hear from her than any other at this moment, a simple and profound, "yes."

They stood there, looking out on the slope of the mountain together; his hand found hers, and they clasped their hands together as he took off the lid with his other. He shook the ashes loose, as the two of them watched them rain on the plants and cascade down to the ground, disguised in with everything else around them.

It was a suitable end.

She leaned her head on Nick's shoulder and looked up at him, with a smile on her face. "That almost seemed anti-climatic," she said. "I thought you were going to throw it like a football against the rocks over there and watch it shatter into a million pieces."

"I thought about it," he said, "but I didn't want to ruin the moment for you."

"What moment?"

"This one," he said, crooking his finger under her chin and tilting it upward to face him. She caught her breath in her throat, and tried to force soft words from between her lips, but anything she could say now would be kind of pointless, as he leaned forward and kissed her. His lips were soft against hers, and she opened her mouth to him; oh, it felt so good to feel him there, pressed against her. She breathed him in, tasted him beneath her tongue; she wanted to freeze time in this moment, this peaceful, beautiful moment, and never leave it. It was just the two of them, and each other, and she wanted to hold onto this and savor it forever. And unlike before, she wasn't bursting into tears and wanting to run away from the situation.

That made it so much better, she had to agree.

They rested their faces against each other, their foreheads brushing and the tips of their noses touching, and Nick whispered to her, soft and sweet and oh-so-sincere, almost as though he had committed the phrases to memory, "_And now, I'm stuck pining after the girl who stole my heart with her gap-toothed smile and big brown eyes. You._"

"You're not 'stuck pining' any longer," she said in a matching whisper, flashing a devious little smile at him; so, apparently, her smile was an attractive feature to Nick. Who knew? It sounded like she had a lot of things to learn about him now, and she was going to have fun with the learning process. "You have me. We have each other."

"I know," he said, winking at her, "and I'm going to consider myself the luckiest guy in the world because of that."

"What do you say that we go back to town, get dinner somewhere, and see where the evening takes us?" she said. "I mean, unless you really were serious about taking me out on the lake."

"Oh, I was," he said, "but it can wait as long as you want it to. Maybe we can do that -" he paused, almost as though he was thinking about it intently, "some other time. When we have the full day, just to ourselves. No other commitments."

"That sounds nice," she said. Something he said took her aback, though, and she wet her lips, before asking for the clarification she so badly desired, "So in other words, you're letting me have control of how fast this relationship horse goes."

"If you want to put it that way, yes. The reins have always been in your hands."

"Don't worry, _partner_," she said, walking back to the car and putting her hand on the handle, tipping an imaginary cowboy hat to Nick with a wink and a laugh, "you won't be riding solo here very much longer. Not with me around."

"Oh, I was _hoping_ that would be what you'd say," he said, walking up behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist, nuzzling into the side of her neck.

As they drove back down the mountain and back into the city, Sara couldn't help but look at Nick again; she swatted at the volume control on the radio, muting the incessant buzzing once and for all. She didn't want to be distracted from what she was doing. She wanted to memorize the curve of his neck and the way his hands held the steering wheel on the curving mountain roads; she wanted to imagine what they would feel like on her, holding her. She wondered if he would hold her the way she wanted to be held, whisper the words of love she knew he'd written about her, love her the way she yearned to be loved.

"What's on your mind?" he asked, rubbing his thumb along the top of her knee.

"Oh, just this guy I know," and she couldn't keep a straight face, so she quickly amended with a "you." She hid a coy smile behind one hand, and for one of the first times in what felt like forever, she knew that everything was going to honestly work out just fine.

For her, for him, for the two of them together.

Everything would be just fine.

-_fini_-

* * *

**Author's Note**: _So this story, and the little universe it created, are now officially complete. There's a high chance that there will be a smutty epilogue to this one day, but as it would be a completely different rating and tone than the rest of the story, that will be posted separately. _

_Thank you to Joe, my wonderful best friend/beta reader/resident Vegas expert/fellow Nick/Sara shipper, for everything you have done for these stories over the past few years - I will never have Sara and Nick undergo excessive rain in Vegas thanks to you, among so many other things I cannot begin to list here. And of course, how can I forget to thank all of the readers over the years. The reviews from my lovely reviewers kept me inspired, even when the updates were few and far between, and I also love all of those who put any of the stories on alert or on their favorites. And even if you did none of that, but read any of these stories still - you rock. Just so you know. :)_

_This isn't the end of me writing for Nick/Sara, just the end of this particular story. There are still a thousand more that could be told, in a million different ways. _


End file.
